Guidelines and General Direction for Standard Library Proposals

[T.J. Crowder]

I'd find it helpful to have:

1. A general steer from TC39 as to whether the committee are committed
to a robust, feature-rich standard library, or a minimal one (with the
expectation of a rich ecosystem of libraries, presumably).

2. Guidelines of what to consider when proposing standard library features.

The latter can come from the community; the former needs to come from TC39.

We see a fair number of simple lib function proposals on the list, it
would be useful to have some guidelines for what's worth properly
proposing and what's likely to be a non-starter.

Naveen Chawla's [recent suggestion][1] is a good case in point: A
standard lib function for taking an array (ideally, an iterable) and
creating an object with properties referencing the elements by one of
their property's values. (One could easily argue for a Set version as
well.) Ignoring the details of his suggestion, this is a simple
operation that I've needed in every codebase I've ever worked on. I
haven't proposed it (having considered doing so repeatedly) because my
perception had been that TC39 wants to keep the standard lib small.
But with the additions in 2015, 2016, and 2017, is that simply not the
case (anymore)?

Apologies if either (1) or (2) already exist and I've overlooked them.

-- T.J. Crowder

[1]: https://esdiscuss.org/topic/array-prototype-toobjectbyproperty-element-element-property